The Home-Based Travel Agent's Keys to Success

PHOTO: An assortment of paper currency from around the world. (photo via Flickr/Japanexperterna.se)

What does it take to be a successful home-based travel agent?

Donna Watson, owner of Jett Set Travel, has a lot to say on the subject. Having started her career as a total newbie, Watson has some compelling advice that is especially relevant, given that the home-based business model now accounts for nearly half of all agents.

Like many home-based agents—and many agents in general—Watson came to travel from a varied non-travel background. She worked as a recruiter of programmers and systems analysts and later took over a commercial janitorial business.

Following 9-11 she lost half of that business, however, “I wasn’t doing what I loved,” she says.

A personal connection—a woman who worked for a small tour operator and was the mother of a girl on the cheerleading squad Watson coached—recommended that Watson go into travel. Tired of “beating the pavement anymore,” Watson took the plunge in 2003 and launched a vigorous self-education program, poring over product brochures, tapping into webinars, learning by trial and error.

“I got a taste of it [travel] and was hooked,” she says. “I couldn’t get enough. I started putting the word out to family and friends. Social media wasn’t as big then as it is now. It was word of mouth.”

Watson also started buying leads, and one of those led to a $7,000 Tahiti honeymoon she booked during her first month in business.

“I never looked back,” she says.

In 2011, Watson hired her first independent consultant. She now works with three more who, like herself, had been new to travel.

“How do I train these IC’s on what I’ve had in my head for 14 years?” she asks.

She calls the Travel Agent Academy the most important training resource she found for them. She also encouraged them to earn their CTA through the Travel Institute.

Her business, which is heavily referral-based, is currently skewed toward families, honeymoons and destination weddings—she does six to ten of the latter a year—but she wants to expand into age 55-plus travel and incentive travel.

It’s been said—many times—that travel is a people business and Wilson takes that to heart. Proof positive is her referral rate which, in turn, led to a huge surge in her business during 2014.

“My business quadrupled and then continued to grow by nearly half every year,” she says. It’s now about $2 million annually. “That was 100 percent referrals; I didn’t do any additional marketing.

“I am big on personalization,” Watson says. “I don’t want to just be email-based; I listen when we [clients] talk and I take notes. [A client’s] mother, for example, had surgery. When I reached out, I mentioned this. That’s how you build trusting relationships.”

Among Watson’s other prescriptions for success? Strong supplier relationships.

“Once a month, we have a new supplier meet my team,” she says. “We also go out to different training modules, anything that comes to our area. In-depth product knowledge—that’s how you sell.”

Social media, too, is critical. Although Watson has a business Facebook page, she uses her personal page to talk about where she’s traveled, to showcase different suppliers and more. The personal page makes more sense as a way to reach family and friends as clients, she says.

A website is also a must. Watson has an Agent Studio site—a travAlliancemedia website solution.

Watson recommends affiliating with a host agency, especially when home-based agents are starting out. “We use the best of everything it has,” she says.

However, being hosted also presents her with one of the challenges home-based agents face: Top supplier accounts come up with the name of the host when booking so that the individual agent remains below the suppliers’ radar, according to Watson.

“That was a driving force in my getting my own IATA number,” she says.

It also led her to seek a secondary phone field for booking with her go-to suppliers including Globus, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Azamara Club Cruises, Holland America, Norwegian Cruise Line, Seabourn, Princess, and Cunard.

Secondary phone lines, along with “finding the BDMs for every vendor in your area and contacting them,” are a way for home-based agents “to avoid falling through the cracks,” she says.

Gaining the exposure that was once available to agents with storefront locations or those working with large agencies is also a challenge for the home-based, according to Watson.

“You don’t have walk-ins, although this evens out because I don’t have the overhead needed to care of walk-ins,” she says.

And being referral-based is a huge advantage.

“I’m getting the cream of the crop [through referrals],” Watson says. “It’s almost like these clients are pre-qualified; you lose the tire kickers.”

Watson calls her agency one big family who, while everyone works from home, gets together periodically.

“We sit at the kitchen table—kids and all—it’s an awesome family environment.”

Her short list for being a successful home-based agent:

—Be willing to work hard—Develop key supplier connections—Have a plan: “Set goals on what you want and work the plan to get there.”

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